'Anyone Makes Money with Cover Songs' The Booming Music Remake Market

An era has dawned where anyone can easily arrange music or earn money through cover songs. Music streaming platform operators are competitively launching related services such as AI arrangement and cover song services one after another. This competition aims to expand the user base while securing a leading position in the music remake market.

YouTuber Raon, who declared participation in Flo's cover song service (Image source=Raon Instagram)

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FLO announced on the 19th that it introduced the cover song service for the first time among domestic music platforms. A cover song is a track sung or played by a vocalist or musician other than the original artist, adding their own unique style. Anyone can upload cover songs featuring their own voice on FLO without worrying about copyright issues. FLO plans to pay users who upload cover songs an amount equivalent to that of the original creators. The payment is 1.4 KRW per stream. If a user's song is played 100,000 times, they can earn 140,000 KRW. It has become possible to earn 'pocket money' through singing.

Earlier, Genie Music unveiled its AI-based arrangement service 'Genie Lira' last month. When an MP3 is uploaded, the AI instantly generates a digital score, which users can edit to arrange the music. This service is also the first of its kind in Korea. In the future, the platform plans to build an ecosystem that allows the release of arranged music based on agreements with original creators regarding copyrights and payments. This means anyone can easily become a composer and even earn money from arranged music.

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Both FLO's cover song service and Genie Music's Genie Lira can be seen as music remake services that transform original tracks. The reason music platforms launched these services within less than a month of each other is to attract users. Genie Music and FLO have been struggling due to a decreasing number of users. The number of users of Genie Music, the third largest in the industry, dropped by about 25% over two years, from 2.7 million in April 2021 to 2.03 million last April. FLO, ranked fourth, also saw a 21% decrease to 1.28 million users compared to two years ago. YouTube Music, which employs a 'bundling' strategy, grew by 88% during the same period, rising from 2.77 million to 5.21 million users and becoming number one.

Music remakes and other 'secondary creations' are representative means to enhance the value of original songs and expand the music market pie. Thanks to remakes, original songs often experience a 'reverse climb' in popularity. With the rapid growth of the domestic copyright market driven by the popularity of K-pop, demand for remakes is also expected to increase. According to data from the Korea Music Copyright Association, domestic copyright fee collections increased more than threefold over ten years, from 110.3 billion KRW in 2012 to 352 billion KRW last year.

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